The bloggings of Sayle

Barndominium

It has been a while since this site has been up, but it’s officially up again and I plan to be posting a lot more in the very near future.

With the new onset of the blog once again I am going to be posting about the next major migration in my life: to build a barndominium and finally get out of the city a bit.

Barndo-what?!?!?! A barndominium is the combination of the words barn and condominium. Now before you go wondering what kind of backwater place I come from to go living in a barn let me clarify saying it’s not really a barn. Technically speaking it’s a steel framed structure that’s been engineered and designed as a “kit” for easy construction. Think of how you have those Lego kits with instructions to build some cool looking piece of art, well this thing is the same thing except with steel beams bolted together that form the skeleton of a house.

Many people would wonder why I would do such a crazy thing, the simple answer is that after 14 years of living in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex I am tired of city life and would like to return to something of my roots out of the hustle and bustle of the city. The official plan is to get my current house in Ft Worth prepared for the market and sell it to purchase some land northwest of Ft Worth for the building of this new experiment.

Why a barndominium? That’s what I first asked myself when I came across these things and they just stuck out in my mind a LOT. Well the huge benefit to them is that unlike a traditional framed house there is no need for internal load bearing walls as the outside steel supports the whole of the structure. This means essentially you can choose however you would like to setup the internals of the house (i.e. the floor plan). So instead of needing to build rooms around load bearing walls inside which determine the overall appearance of the floor plan in a barndominium you essentially choose how you want to set the floorplan yourself. The other very large benefit of one is that it’s trivial to have an attached workshop or garage.

I am constantly working on my motorcycle, car, or something else which requires a good amount of room. On top of this with all of my activities such as camping, bicycling, kayaking, mechanics, etc. I need a LOT of space and a 2 car garage is showing it’s limits with a kayak hanging on the ceiling, a motorcycle taking up a spot, and a car taking the other spot. This is along with my huge amount of tools and power tools I have in there.

The next phase of this is to start designing a floor plan and speaking to contractors that specialize in these to price it out.